A company called ChromaGen Vision has created specialized lenses. It claims that the lenses can help people with dyslexia to read faster and more accurately. Could this really work? Or, is this company simply taking the money of desperate parents?
Dyslexia is a learning disability. Children and adults who have dyslexia have difficulty learning how to read, and problems with interpreting words, letters, and other symbols. It isn’t unusual for kids who are dyslexic to have problems with spelling words correctly.
Parents of kids who have dyslexia cannot assume that their child will “grow out of” this learning disability. There isn’t a “cure”, and there aren’t any medications that can help. No one knows exactly what causes this disability, but different studies have shown that it is not connected to intelligence, and it is not something caused by a problem with the child’s eyes.
It is easy to see why some parents can feel compelled to try absolutely everything that they think can help their child to be able to read. It can be frustrating to not be able to help your child to read, especially if you aren’t dyslexic yourself, and you can’t comprehend what a page of writing looks like to your child.
A company named ChromaGen Vision has created a series of colored lenses that they claim can help dyslexic people to read faster and more accurately. They come in the form of contact lenses, or glasses. The special tints come in a variety of sixteen different colors, but will look gray to people who see someone else wearing them.
In order to get these special lenses, you have to go to the ChromaGen Vision website, and answer a series of questions. The company uses those answers to come up with a specific pair of lenses for each client. The glasses, and the exam, cost around $1,000. For those fitted with contact lenses, it would cost around $500. The contact lenses would have to be replaced every six months.
Do the lenses actually work? The ChromaGen Vision website says that the lenses help about 50% of people who have dyslexia. ChromaGen Chief Executive Ted Edwards says that the true rate is much higher than that.
On the other hand, there are some doctors who say that these lenses do not actually help at all. Dr. Sheryl Handler, a pediatric ophthalmologist, says:
“There is definitely no evidence that the lenses will improve dyslexia”.
This view is shared by Deborah Giaschi, a professor of opthalmology and visual sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She says that there isn’t any scientific basis that shows that the ChromaGen lenses work.
Parents who are considering purchasing expensive lenses from a company on the internet might want to slow down, and do some research first. These lenses are not necessarily going to help your child to be able to read.
Image by Sam Wolff on Flickr